


514th Day

by Frin



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 09:38:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2104842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frin/pseuds/Frin





	514th Day

Rose swung the steering wheel into the car park under Canary Wharf and sighed as she parked in her reserved space. There were very few vehicles there which wasn’t surprising considering what day it was.

They were probably all at home sleeping or nursing hangovers as they should be, unlike she was.

The lift was already open and she blinked back the bite of tears as she descended to the lower floors of Torchwood 1. 

She rarely cried anymore, but this was a time for families and for lovers and she felt as though she was neither.

Her mother had wanted her to go to their New Year’s Eve bash, but she had put in more than enough time there over Christmas to last her a fair few days at least. Besides, she had needed to catch up on a few things here.

As she wandered down the empty corridors, her memories travelled back, as they always did in her every waking consciousness; to the summer before last when hope had shone brightly for a scant few hours and then her own personal darkness had resumed.

 

_The square in the sand was all that was left even as the echo of whale song faded into the distance and the damp hand in hers trembled. She looked into his eyes and wondered if this could really work. He looked ill, twitchy, and he began to ramble almost immediately. In fact, it was almost too much and he was gasping for breath._

_“Doctor?” Rose had stopped him on the beach, worried about the repetitions of words and the constant talk of nothing._

_“Stupid, stupid… Rose, you have to help… something’s wrong…” His eyes flashed to hers in a bout of consciousness amongst the babble._

_“What? What’s wrong, Doctor?”_

_“I’m not… listen… I have to do something… I won’t seem like… but I have to… please help me… be patient?”_

_He had collapsed in her arms then and it was less then an hour before Pete arrived via helicopter to take them back to London and the security of the Torchwood medical laboratories._

_He was in and out of consciousness, and drifted between the frenzied babbling to a silent gaze into space. Every now and then he would look at Rose and speak words that made no sense._

 

It had been frightening and confusing and she had had little time to worry about the Doctor who had left them behind. Later on she would find an anger towards him that burnt.

As she typed in the key for the room she had been frequenting pretty much since then, her pager went off. She looked at it, smiled briefly and opened the door.

“It’s alright, Tosh… I’m here… what is it?”

“I’m not sure… he seems to be very conscious today… moving about and staring… I wonder if the mixture might need re-testing?”

“Maybe he’s due out?” Rose looked at the bubbling tank in front of them and picking up the chart, studied it with a furrowed brow.

“He gave instructions…” replied Tosh shaking her head.

“Yeah… look at him though…” Rose moved right up to the glass, placed the palm of her hands flat upon it and looked into the pair of eyes that stared back at her.

“He did that last month, though? Remember?”

“But not with the bubbles… you checked the temperature?”

“It’s only slightly up… I don’t get it… should I call in the medics?”

“No! You know what he said... you were here, Tosh…” Rose’s voice must have vibrated through the glass, suddenly she found herself face to face with him. 

His eyes roamed around her features as if he were studying her for the first time and then he moved away again, swimming through the pink water unable to keep still.

“It says in his notes that there may come a day…” Tosh sidled up beside and observed the body now thrashing about in the liquid.

 

_"But you can’t!” she was horrified at what he was trying to tell her._

_“I need… I need… to keep… this body safe… you don’t understand… I will burn… I am burning as we speak… it’s the only way…”_

_“But for how long? And how will we know how to take care of you?”_

_“It’s all here… I’ve keyed in… the dos and the don’ts… it’s really not rocket science…”_

_“But we can’t decipher that… we tried, our translators aren’t capable!”_

_“The coral will as she grows… you look after the coral… and… she’ll… look after…” He had collapsed again at that point, all his energies had been taken up building the tank and mixing the exact right formula_

_He only came around briefly once more after that._

_“Prepare me… put me in… and leave me… if you try to intervene, then I will die… there will be nothing left… my mind is going, Rose… you won’t know me… but wait… wait and wait again…”_

_“I can’t do it…” she had sobbed as he all but died in her arms._

_“It will be alright… wait… just wait…” he whispered like an echo inside her head._

 

Rose and Tosh had undressed him and dropped him into the tank as per instructions. Data appeared on the laptop he had wired up to the tank almost instantly and the little piece of coral that grew in a pot of similar formula beside it, began to roughly translate it so that Tosh or Rose could keep an eye on him at all times.

That had been nearly eighteen months ago and although there had been a handful of occasions where he had surfaced and got out, paced around, checked the data, the formula; he had said nothing, looking straight through Rose as if he couldn’t even see her.

It was as if she were in limbo. Hope was nowhere to be seen, this shell of the Doctor seemed exactly that and it filled her with such rage. She was left babysitting nothing and still she did it because the love in heart compelled her to.

This was a fine forever he had left her with, wasn’t it?

The room was locked down; marked Top Secret and only Tosh and Rose were allowed access. With the exception of Pete, of course, who said very little about the whole matter but liked to keep tabs on everything within Torchwood 1.

Jackie had even stopped asking questions now.

“Rose?” Tosh nudged her. He was back, looking deep into Rose’s face as if he were trying to understand who she was, or maybe he was trying to tell her something?

“Yeah… he says in his notes… the day will come and we’ll know… I mean, it’s weird today, but I don’t know anything, frankly, I’m scared…”

At this moment, the figure turned from them and swam quickly away. Tosh grunted and closed her eyes, “I wish he wouldn’t do that!” Rose had stopped noticing.

His instructions clearly stated that he was to be unclothed, that the solution would monitor him better unencumbered by fabrics and that wet clothes would have restricted him anyway. He needed to feel as if he were within a kind of womb. This was the best translation they could fathom from what the coral was saying and Rose and Tosh had found it pretty difficult at the time.

 

_"You know, I find this quite repellent… I’m not a doctor… I’m a scientist!”_

_“Yeah… you think I want to do this?”_

_“Well… he’s your…”_

_“Tosh… he is not! Just don’t look, we’ll take them off quickly and roll him in…”_

_“You ever tell Veronica about this and you’re dead meat!” hissed Tosh closing her eyes and taking a deep breath._

 

Rose had put a wide band of paper around the tank to cover him when he was still, but it wasn’t completely efficient. Time got them over the embarrassment and they were mostly blasé about it now.

The laptop started to bleep, spewing frantic data from the printer nearby.

Rose sat down by Tosh and watched as the coral desperately tried to keep up.

**Nuclear bolt…**

**Excess Radiation…**

**Vinvocci glass…**

**500,000 rads…**

**Time…**

**Time…**

**Time…**

**Geronimo!**

“Geronimo? What the hell does that mean? Oh God look at it!”

The solution in the tank was bubbling like a cauldron on the boil, the body within no longer visible.

“He’s cooking!” Tosh shouted, stepping towards the tank and then back, unable to take the heat coming off it.

“Get back!” Rose screamed as the noise from both tank and laptop reached excruciating decibels. They ran to the door and crouched behind a table that Rose tipped over.

The explosion and noise were immense as the tank erupted and shattered. Rose peered over the table and shielded her eyes at the bright yellow light that filled the room. She could see him standing there, his outlined head pointing to the ceiling, arms stretched out. She could hear him screaming as the intense heat seemed to engulf him in quite the reverse of what she had witnessed twice before.

And then, as suddenly as it had all begun, everything went deadly quiet, the lights vanished and he was standing there, naked and stunned.

“You?” he stuttered at Rose as she stood up.

“Yes,” she answered, puzzled by his shock.

He looked down at himself and then back up quickly, hands covering parts she had seen thousands of times already. “I’m naked!”

“Yes, you are.”

“What happened… how...? I don’t… Rose?” He made a movement towards her, but she could see, he was weakened and his body wasn’t used to being on solid ground, besides that, he was surrounded by shards of broken glass.

“Don’t move… I’ll come to you…” She pulled the white lab coat from the back of the door and picked her way through the glass. He was pale and confused as she handed it to him and averted her eyes. She turned and pushed a pathway through the glass with her toe and led him gently out of the debris to the other side of the lab where the splinters lessened.

He sat down hard on the chair she led him to. Tosh was keeping her distance, observing from behind the table with wide, frightened eyes.

“Where am I?”

“I’d of thought that obvious… what the hell was wrong with you? Why?”

“Why what, Rose, I don’t get it… I was in the TARDIS… my time was up… I was regenerating, next thing I’m here… where is… he?”

“What?”

“Human me, meta-crisis me… where is he?”

“I don’t get it… what do you mean… you are him.”

“What… but I don’t…” The Doctor, clutched at his chest, finally beginning to realise exactly what and where he was.

“Tell me…” he looked imploringly at her and her anger although bubbling furiously inside her, had to take a backseat while she… while they… tried to work out exactly what had happened.

“You left me… left me here with him… and it was moments before he, before he began to fail… his pulse was racing, he was barely coherent but adamant that I had to help him, keep his body alive… kept asking me to wait… we bought him here, he was so ill… but he managed to build a sort of cryogenic tank, mix the right chemicals and compute all the data into that laptop… oh, yeah and that coral you gave him… she’s been working… oh no!” Rose ran across the room to where the little piece of coral had been blasted to. She cupped it in her hands and tearfully bought it over to where he was sitting.

“I remember something… the TARDIS… she gave up a life… she regenerated for me… to get me here… this coral… it probably wouldn’t have… although… you never know…” He gently took it from her hands and pressed it to his face.

“Is it..?”

“No, there’s a small sign of life… she might not make it… but we can hope… miracles can happen.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“As the embers of me died out from this body, I must have made a decision.”

“What… decision?”

“A body like this… useful… rather appealing, at least to you… maybe I realised that I could use it when the time came…”

“Nope... still don’t understand…”

“The Doctor, who was me has just regenerated and the TARDIS sent what was left of his last generation here… the coral told her… told her there was a perfectly good vessel waiting here, preserved and pretty much useless…”

“Like your hand?”

“Like this very same hand here, yes, exactly like it… I didn’t know… thought that was my lot… in fact I truly believed you were having a fantastic life with this body without me.”

“Wait… you told me to wait…”

“And… did you?”

“Shut up… what do you think?”

“I can’t quite get my head around… Rose… is it possible… could I just have that laptop and a quiet space while I… think?” Rose felt suddenly out of control. It sounded like he wanted to leave. He must have seen the look on her face. “Here, I mean here, some clothes, a bed… some of the formula for this poor little coral. Just need to absorb. You don’t have to go… I don’t want you to go…”

“I’ll see what we can do…” She got a glass bowl, moved over to the remains of the tank and filled it. Then she handed it back to the Doctor before going to Tosh.

Tosh was still hovering by the table and Rose stood by her as they both watched him very gently installing the coral into the bowl.

“What was that?” Tosh asked quietly.

“I think I know, but I can’t exactly explain… at least not yet. Listen, I’m going to let him have the rest room for a bit. I need to get this lot cleared. Why don’t you go home?”

“Seriously?”

“Tosh, the experiments over... it’d be great to get back in Veronica’s good books too.”

“But… I’ve been so… involved…”

“You have and you still will be, honestly, but right now, he needs to work it all out for himself. Tomorrow we’ll get some answers.”

So a slightly disgruntled Tosh left them and she showed him into the little room where either one of them had rested on the night shift.

“I’ll go and find your suit… yeah?” 

“A cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss… maybe a biscuit, I’m suddenly quite hungry?” 

Rose walked over to the storage cupboard and unlocked it. The blue suit was the only thing hanging inside and she pulled it out and looked at it wondering if it was the appropriate thing for this man to be offered but not really having any choice in the matter. Then she went to her desk, called reception and asked for a clean up team and whatever food could be rustled up from the canteen.

She made the brew herself, not trusting the machines scattered around the building. She took a deep breath and armed with the suit and a steaming mug she knocked lightly on the door. There was no answer so she timidly let herself in.

He was curled up in the narrow bed fast asleep, laptop not touched and coral settled on the bedside table. She leaned over and touched his forehead, then satisfied that he was just sleeping; she settled in the chair beside him and waited.

She must have dozed off because when she woke he was sitting cross legged on the bed typing away on the laptop. He was wearing the maroon t-shirt and blue trousers, but his feet were bare.

“Hello…” he said peering at her shyly over the familiar tortoise shell glasses she remembered so very well. Instantly a lump came to her throat but she bit it back.

“I fell asleep?”

“You weren’t the only one… still; think I got the better deal.”

“I ordered food.”

“Yeah, they bought it down, knocked, that’s what woke me actually. Stuffed my face, was hungrier than I thought.”

“They’ve cleared the lab up?”

“They have, hardly made a sound.”

“Feel like I’ve been out ages now.”

“Couple of hours, tops.” The atmosphere was stilted, tense and Rose wasn’t sure where to begin asking, so she didn’t. After a while, he smiled and turned back to the lap top.

She watched him, mesmerised by his animated features. In all this time, with all the anger brewing inside her, she had forgotten how attracted to him she was. And now, now she had no clue where she stood, or even how she felt about him. So engrossed in her thoughts was she, that she didn’t notice him looking at her.

“Rose?” she jumped out of her skin.

“Yeah?”

“I’m done here. Sorted it out.”

“Right.”

“You want to know?”

“You can fill in the gaps.”

“Right… as the Time Lord I failed to realise that a clone me wouldn’t make it… that without me or the TARDIS, he would basically burn out. Donna was having similar problems… had to take every single memory she had of me away in order to save her… anyway… so the echo of me within this body… saw, saw exactly what was going to happen, but something else, the TARDIS showed him more, showed him that I wasn’t long in that generation. He worked out that he could preserve the body in the time I had left and by creating a link between the TARDIS and the coral, keep tabs on the when and the where.”

“But he talked, for days while he sorted it…”

“Fighting for survival… wanted to give you what was promised.”

“And so you’re…”

“I’m the Doctor… well, what’s left of him… your Doctor… got another chance and finally get to make good on my word.”

“What?”

“The Doctor still travels in the other universe, Rose, but he’s no longer me… all that was left of me was siphoned into this very handy body…”

“So you’re… you’re human?”

“As good as…” He couldn’t help but twitch at the thought of it. “So, it’s you and me again, Rose, the old team, waddya say?”

“The old… team?” 

“Oh, I know we haven’t a TARDIS, but you know we’ve got quite good at waiting… one day…” He patted the little coral beside him that hummed distinctively at his touch and glowed from pink to orange blushing to nearly red and then back to pink again.

“Just like before?”

“Well… in time… yeah… you don’t want to?”

“I’ve barely had time to… no, now wait a minute… you left me… stranded me after all I went through to get back… left me with a piece of Doctor shaped flesh… expected me to wait after promising me… well, promising me and now here you are doing it again… I poured my heart out to you the first time and the second time all you could do is ask me if it needed saying and walk out on me..; leaving me to babysit…” she stopped, bit her tongue and upon seeing his amused expression got up and walked quickly to the door.

But he was there, jumped off the bed and came between her and the door before she could leave.

“Rose…” her eyes turned down to his bare feet, not wanting him to see the tears. But he tucked a finger under her chin and bought her face up so that her eyes met his. She gasped at what she saw there. “The echo of me did this for us… because he couldn’t bear to see you left alone… he knew before anyone and I’m so glad he did. On that beach, both times, Rose… oh god how I broke apart… I wasn’t the same man after that. I talked of mending him when I was broken all over again. But if there’s one thing I’ve learnt over these years… it’s that it does need saying… often.”

The tears were pouring freely now and he moved in a little closer, put his arms around her and rested his forehead upon hers.

“Rose Tyler… I love you… I always have and I always will…”

It had been 514 days since the Doctor had left his double with her and finally, Rose Tyler was getting her reward.

It was going to take some time, lots of talking and reassurance, but on this New Year’s Day Rose began to feel something that she hadn’t in a very long time. She was filled with hope.

As she reached up and tentatively pressed her lips to his, she wondered about the other man, the Doctor alone and different and she thought vaguely of how her mother was going to react and then she was lost in kissing the man she loved. 

The man she would always wait for.


End file.
